By Diana Wilkinson

 

I’m still caught off guard when I’m served mint chocolate chip ice cream and it’s not green. You would think because mint leaves are green it would make green ice cream, isn’t that why it’s green most of the time?

It’s fairly obvious to me now, but that bright green color is just added to look appealing–that’s the only purpose, color! You can also find this fake coloring in pickles, salad dressing, and so many more everyday food products.

In the Nabhan Ted Talk, she mentions a synthetic grain that’s gaining popularity. It looks like the real thing. Tastes like the real thing. But she says no matter how similar it seems we cannot fool our bodies.

Real foods have superior nutrition, taste and are often have less impact on the planet. Instead of trying to replicate sweetness or bright colors, the average consumer should instead look for the simplest ingredients and work to make those accessible to everyone.

Someone, somewhere had the ingenious idea to instead NOT add the food coloring, and I think it’s representative of a greater trend in the food system. People don’t want synthetic dyes and will choose to alternatively eat more natural products.

Kraft even announced it’s famous macaroni and cheese would take out the almost iconic, unnatural orange color!

If a large company like Kraft is making these changes as a result of consumer demand, I have faith consumers will eventually drive the market away from the processed to the whole and real foods.

 

The separations that have been made between those who grow the food and those who eat the food, if only that link could be closed…miracles would start to happen” – Vandana Shiva

Relationships with food must include a relationship with the environment; the environment is inclusive of the cultural, physical, and political aspects that comprise every item we see in the grocery store.

A few weekends ago I joined two other FoodWork’s fellows, Grace and Sarah, for a day at Common Good City Farm. This urban farm is truly a unique part of DC. On the farm, it felt like I was so far removed from the city; the wooden gate and sprouting vegetables prevented me from thinking about the world I was not currently and physically interacting in and communicating with.

I was excited to spend the day weeding and eager to tackle the tasks in the garden that lay before me. I crouch down, balancing in a squat position, with my back slightly arched, and my hands completely entrenched in the dirt as it squeezes its way beneath my fingernails.

Unfortunately, most of the world’s food supply does not come from carefully tended organic farms like this one. For the most part, the focus is on the quantity, rather than the quality of yields. This approach does not promote biodiversity and fails to recognize that we do not have an endless supply of resources.The economic and ecological sustainability of our agricultural system is thus severely threatened.

Environmental issues (i.e. global warming) can feel so far removed and not substantial enough to make individual changes to our daily routines. Some underestimate the impact small changes can collectively have on a farmer and the impact on the environment. Farming, however, can help one appreciate what it takes to achieve what is sometimes taken for granted. The labor that is put into food is not truly acknowledged until one has to do it themselves. In order to be conscious of the thankless work farmers and environmentalists do to preserve culture and ecological diversity one must experience it for oneself.

What does it mean to eat in a world where you scroll your virtual shopping cart through the isles and bag your groceries with a double click? The emergence of online food shopping offers a certain percent of the population an upgrade in easy access to their favorite foods, but how easy is too easy? You can now have a supermarket deliver your groceries to your door, get Amazon to overnight perishable goodies, and order pre-portioned ingredients to prepare a meal at home. Just like that, the already minimal connection consumers have with their food is intercepted by a combination of technology and laziness.

In her TedTalk, Winona LaDuke describes in great detail the histories of crops grown on her land and by her people. With such intricate details, her people are able to gain a better understanding of how to best grow their plants and sustain their land. In comparison, most stories around food for the average American most likely involve a grandmother and some type of pie (for me, it was brownies). Most of us have trouble tracking down the stories of our food much farther back than that.

With a deep, personal understanding of a food, as expressed by LaDuke in her stories, people have the knowledge necessary not only to sustain the growth of crops, but also to protect them from alterations from pesticides and genetic modification. With a history comes a certain respect and caring for a food and the land it’s produced on.

The monopolization of the seed industry and subsequent heavy uses of fertilizer leave the majority of farmers in a vicious cycle of debt, leading to increased suicide rates among the people who grow and harvest our food (Shiva). As farmers relieve themselves from the unlivable conditions our food system has created for them, consumers are relieved of having to travel to the grocery store, hand selecting their food, and carrying their take their goods back home.

As we continue into this century, it is time to rethink the farmer-consumer relationship. How can we use our technological advances and creative thinking to come up with systems that add ease to a farmer’s life in ways that such ease has been added to the life of the consumer? And so, ask not what your farmer can do for you, but what you can do for your farmer.

 

 

By Diana Wilkinson

Some people eat to live while others live to eat. It’s an expression I’ve heard hundreds of times, and reflects what I view as a flawed mentality surrounding food in current American culture. The act of eating should be more than to sustain life and less than an all consuming time-suck.

“Much of our present debate on the state of the contemporary food system….is grounded in two powerful American cultural values,” according to Trubeck. “First that talking and caring about food above and beyond its mere sustenance value are improper, and second, that every american deserves a chicken in his or her pot.”

Food simply isn’t as cherished here compared to other places. Caring about your food isn’t something we value. When I lived in Italy, the locals saw food is art, a source of community, and a sacred cultural tradition worth preserving.

Once I ate a slice of pizza while walking to the bus and people looked at me like I was walking backwards with my shoes tied together. I shudder to think what they would think if they knew about one of five meals is eaten in a car.

On the other hand, Americans do feel a strong sense of responsibility to ensure everyone has food, but how much good does that do if the food lacks nutritional value. Eating processed and unhealthy food may be better than nothing, but it may not make people feel good and lead to serious health problems down the road.

Maybe these two deeply entrenched cultural values are in part what lead to the pervasiveness of fast food in American society. The cheapness of fast food has made is so no one goes hungry–or at least it appears that way.
I do believe Americans are starting to become increasingly and unapologetically mindful of the food they consume. Hopefully, that will translate to those of every income and we can start to become a better fed nation.

An excerpt from Agyeman and McEntee in “Moving the Field of Food Justice Forward Through the Lens of Urban Political Ecology” compliments the story Melissa shared at Common Good City Farm: “The state now defines what is or is not an area of inadequate food access, thereby legitimizing the claims of some and discounting others who do not meet the state’s criteria.” (Agyeman, McEntee, 2014). Melissa spoke about how Shaw, the neighborhood where Common Good City Farm is located, is no longer considered a food desert because a Whole Foods was recently built. However, simply building a grocery store does not guarantee food access or food justice. Some basic solutions to end food injustice are often left out of the equation. This includes nutrition education–providing access to healthy food and produce does not guarantee that people will shift their diets.

So what do I see as part of the solution? One way I envision change is through school food education, with a curriculum that’d include farming, cooking, and tasting. Just as Phys Ed is not a class confined to a lecture-style classroom, “Food Ed” should not be either.

Malnutrition spans across socioeconomic class and race/ethnicity; undernutrition and overnutrition fall under this umbrella and adverse health problems can accompany both. Thus, food education needs to be implemented into the school curriculum, and should not be limited to low-income communities or communities designated as food deserts. Making it a mandatory component to education, similar to how Phys Ed is integrated in the school day, would provide children with the training and skills to eat and grow healthy food.

So what is the potential and feasibility for something like this to happen, in D.C. perhaps? Over the past few weeks we have learned that there is enormous opportunity for rooftop farming in D.C. because buildings have a 12-story height limit and most of the city’s rooftops are flat. Of course there are larger factors that would greatly influence such a monumental change in the curriculum and city landscape to occur, but certainly, D.C. would be an excellent starting point before scaling up.

While farming is largely associated with acres of crops in rural America, it is clear that farming is being redefined to encompass a broader breadth of landscapes. Urban farming offers a unique opportunity to make food education feasible for most schools–whether it be rural, suburban, or urban. Schools especially can help change this perception by exposing kids to the joy of farming, the skillset required to produce their own food, and the resources to develop a healthful palate.

I was the least popular kid during lunchtime in elementary school; no one ever wanted to trade a Fruit-by-the-Foot for my celery and grapes. When I asked my mom to pack “good” lunches like the other moms, she refused. I continued to make it clear and very well heard that I did not want everything in my lunch box to either be a vegetable, fruit, or strut the label “organic.”

My sister, Jessica, and I found the opportunity to get what we wanted during the monthly trip to Acme (the conventional grocery store in our neighborhood). There was a stark contrast between Acme and the cooperative market we visited daily, Weaver’s Way. The Acme clearly depicted Pollan’s description of American grocery stores: a place where the abundance of choice makes it nearly impossible to make good food decisions. As a kid, this dilemma was by no means related to making a good food decision. What it came down to was, did we want Frosted Flakes (with a toy included) or Cinderella themed Lucky Charms? Ultimately, this was determined by which marketer was best able to capture our interest while in the grocery store.

After much practice, Jessica and I had manufactured a strategic plan to distract our mom from the packaged, sugar-dense item we snuck on the belt, without her or the cashier becoming suspicious. Once we got home, one of us would rummage through the bag (with urgency) to find the contraband, and hide it in one of our rooms.

Schlosser, in Fast Food Nation, highlighted the influence marketing has on children. The direct and intentional effort marketers make to engage and entice kids, is the basis for the development of bad eating and nutrition in children. I am grateful for my parents conscious and persistent effort to resist the pull from me and food corporations, however the regular diet of many people reflects the strong influence of the food industry to influence the choices in the American shopping cart.

I am very impressed by the commitment of my roommate, Karen, and her internship site, CentroNía to combat this force. The school is unique in that they promote healthy eating at a young age, by providing healthy, free lunches for young children, not allowing any fast-food to enter the school, and hosting community cooking workshops. Their efforts are paying off.

It is encouraging to see the growth and efforts that schools, among other organizations, are making to ensure kids eat healthy. Food’s role as a determinant of school performance, behavior, and long-term health (to name a few) is being consistently brought to light, in a concerted effort to counteract a fast, packaged, and passive food culture.